I Do Desire We May Be Better Strangers
by Katia-chan
Summary: He wishes he could have met her in another life. It would have been a fantastic friendship. [It's technically Shigure Mayu, but that's not the endgame.]


I Do Desire We May Be Better Strangers

By Katia-chan

Notes: This was supposed to be funny. It... didn't come out that way. Apparently sad introspection is all I can do now. There are like 8 different versions of this I wanted to do. But I'm trying not to disappear for a year at a time, so I went with the first one that came out of my brain. Hope it's alright. If you like it, or don't, commentary is always appreciated, as it's nice to know I'm not writing into the void. And I'm super appreciative of any time you can take to let me know you stopped by.

The characters, obviously, are from Fruits Basket. The title quotation is from good old Billy Shakespeare, from "As you Like it," I believe. I found it on my Shakespearean insults mug like a year ago, and it was so very fitting for Shigure and Mayu that I knew I was going to have to use it someday. TBH, looking at all the insults, I could do an entire fic, or heck even a series, just about Mayu saying witty seventeenth-century burns to Shigure. It would not be hard.

I have no legal rights to any of this material.

XXXXXX

"Why you boys thought you could beat me in a drinking contest, I'll never know!" Mayuko raises her beer glass victoriously, and slams it down on the top of the bar. Ayame finishes his drink with a gasp, and a cry of disappointment. Kana is helpless with laughter, her hand clutched in Hatori's, adorably tipsy and unable to sit upright, though she's only had a few beers. Even Hatori is laughing, lifting his own drink in a salute to Mayu's prowess.

"We shouldn't have ever under-estimated you," Ayame gasps, ever theatrical, lifting his hands in defeat, almost tipping backwards off of his stool, and hardly noticing the reflexive hand Hatori shoots out to keep him upright.

"No, you shouldn't have. But you did, and so, doom!" Mayu is very, very drunk, her cheeks flushed and her hair plastered to her face. And she'd be on the floor if it weren't for the bar she's leaning on. But the finger she points at the intertwined couple down the bar is very steady as she proclaims "Hatori, you're next!"

"She's right, our honor must be restored!" Ayame exclaims at the top of his lungs, to the dismay of the other patrons around them. He gets so much louder than usual when he's drunk, but he's magnificent enough while he's doing it that they won't get kicked out. "Come on, Tori, do it for us! Avenge me!"

Hatori, the designated driver, is not as drunk as the rest of them, and he lifts his hand in a feeble protest. But Mayuko is already shouting for another round of drinks, and he's buzzed enough that he'll probably do this for her, especially with Kana drunkenly goading him, and Ayame shouting encouragements. They can afford a cab home, anyway.

Shigure lost the first round some time ago, and while everyone else races cheerfully into oblivious drunkenness, he sits, uncharacteristically quiet, watching his girlfriend give a very unladylike cackle of malicious joy as Hatori receives a full glass. He loves these people, as much as he's capable, and the fact that tonight feels so sour is irritating him.

Mayu is really a lovely woman, he reflects, even as he watches her slosh beer down her shirt. Not his type, but she has spirit, and passion, that he can admire. It mirrors his own, except hers is honest, and real, and in moments like this she can share it with the one she loves, since they're all too drunk to notice or remember. And as he watches her elbow Ayame, and make stupid faces at Kana to get her to laugh, because that will make Hatori laugh (trying it on Hatori directly had already failed), he feels a surprisingly bitter ache, discordant with the merriment around him.

If they'd met in another way, or in another life, well... He'd still be drinking. He'd probably drunkenly kiss her goodnight, and she'd fondly slap him away and call him a cab, and in the morning he'd pretend to be sad about the rejection, but he wouldn't be. Because that's the sort of silly thing real friends did. She might do it to Ayame tonight. Or if the fates were cruel, Hatori.

But tonight, when he drops her off, he'll pull up in front of her house, and let her out of the car. He might watch to make sure she gets in safely, but he won't walk her in, or kiss her on the cheek, or make sure she has water and pain killers. He won't call her in the morning to tease her about her hangover. He'll send her a few mocking pictures of her drunken exploits later, but because of how they met, and who they love, and the cartloads of baggage they each brought with them, he'll lose out on those morning hours of friendly torment. He imagines what it would be like to know her, if he didn't _know_ her, and in this unfortunate moment of sobriety, he feels that loss, very keenly.

He doesn't love her, and he doesn't want to love her. And that's the problem. If things were different, he still wouldn't love her, and that would be fine. He'd get to really enjoy himself, instead of constantly maneuvering her for the things ahead. And she'd be happy. And he wouldn't feel like he was missing out.

And there would be four of them, not five.

"I'm ashamed of you, Ha-san," he proclaims, draping himself over Ayame's lap with a bit more fervor than usual. "You were our last hope, and now she's going to be positively unbearable." He can't stand himself anymore, so he throws himself into the fray with a will. Because things are how they are, and he's too well-acquainted with the woman at the other end of the bar to ever be happy with her, and he's just going to have to deal with it, and not care about it. Which, after all, is his specialty.

"Look who's talking!" Mayu accuses, with a cheerful drunken honesty that hits more home than she meant. "You're just mad that you lost." He looks at her, hair a mess, splattered in beer, hardly able to sit upright, beaming and flushed and victorious...

In five or so years, after their relationship implodes two short weeks from this moment, she'll have started to be able to sit in a room with him without snarling. They'll have a few real talks. She'll, mostly, stop looking at him like he's about to push her down the stairs, or like she'd like to do that to him. They'll go out together, the four of them, and share drinks, and he'll take embarrassing videos of Hatori making a drunken happy fool of himself. And he and Mayu will even have some nice conversations that will start to heal the past, and slowly and awkwardly they'll inch towards a tentative, careful friendship. It will almost be like getting to know her again, if not fresh, at least with a little more of that distance he craves.

"I never lose," he tells her, in that bar, with their best friends, and so many more mistakes to be made and things to be broken. "I get everything I want."

It's generally true. Tonight, it's a little less so.


End file.
